Mission

The First Nations Language Centre aims to:

  • maintain and develop ongoing partnerships with First Nations communities engaged in language revitalization efforts;
  • provide academic support for community-based efforts to revitalize seriously endangered languages in First Nations communities throughout British Columbia and neighbouring areas;
  • offer research expertise with a focus on First Nations language revitalization theory and practice in communities;
  • support language curriculum development, and facilitate research in the applied and descriptive linguistics of critically endangered languages; and
  • facilitate communication between First Nations communities and the university.

Goals

The First Nations Language Centre will also use an integrated approach to research in language revitalization. The First Nations Language Centre will collaborate with specific First Nations language communities and their organizations to:

  • support local First Nations language learning in a safe environment while maintaining high academic standards, in collaboration with First Nations community organizations;
  • work in concert with academic programming in First Nations languages offered by SFU to improve effectiveness and impact of this programming;
  • deliver support for local First Nations language learners and instructors by facilitating language curriculum design, language course and lesson planning, student assessment, and evaluation formats as part of the centre's focus on research in language revitalization;
  • conduct collaborative research on best practices and locally practicable solutions in First Nations language revitalization and maintenance;
  • enable, attract and conduct collaborative research with First Nations communities in applied linguistics of First Nations languages, including, e.g. pedagogical grammars of First Nations language proficiency, and multimedia design and online delivery of First Nations language learning;
  • attract graduate students doing research in various fields relevant to First Nations languages and linguistics, community language revitalization, language planning and documentation; and
  • facilitate networking and collaboration among First Nations language learners of diverse languages to share successes, challenges, learning and teaching methodologies, research projects and results.